Letters to Santa
by downton-and-daydreams
Summary: Cora finds a letter to Santa, written by one of her children many years ago.


**A/N: This is my entry to the Cobert Christmas Exchange – my picture was of a letter to Santa and my prompt was the word 'ink' although it's used a little vaguely in this. I've slightly fiddled with the timeline so that Sybil is a little older – and also this should be rated upper T, not really M, I don't think, but upper T. **

'Oh, Robert, that was wonderful,' Cora sighed, kissing Robert sweetly before curling up next to him and humming as he stroked her hair lovingly, 'in fact, I'm so very happy right now I can hardly believe it.'

'I'm glad,' he said, pressing kisses to her hair, 'I'm glad because I know you haven't been very happy at all this year, and that was down to me, but I am glad if we are alright now.'

'Of course we're alright,' she said, tilting her head up to kiss him, 'I hardly think you would have pulled me into Lord Sinderby's library after dinner and made love to me up against that bookshelf if we weren't alright. I'm sure they heard us, you know. Lady Sinderby has a wonderfully disapproving look, much better than Mama's, it's like she practices it in front of a mirror.'

He laughed and kissed her again before they settled down to sleep, but at the back of his mind there was the thought that she might be embarrassed if one of Lady Sinderby's servants happened to discover them naked in her bed.

'Darling, do you want me to fetch your nightgown?' he asked, 'I don't know how reliable Lady Sinderby's servants are, they might gossip about you if they find out we've been sleeping like this.'

'I don't care,' she murmured, without raising her head from his chest, 'I like sleeping like this, it makes me feel much closer to you and I've missed that lately.'

'Alright,' he smiled, kissing the top of her head, secretly rather pleased that she had declined his offer simply because he too enjoyed sleeping like that, he too felt closer that way and he had indeed missed that lately – though it was his own fault, certainly not hers, if she liked sleeping like this then he should have made sure that they did.

'I think I've forgotten to say Merry Christmas,' he said, laughing, 'I was probably just distracted by my beautiful wife, so Merry Christmas, Cora, and I hope we are able to spend many more together.'

'Mer-oh, wait, that reminds me of something,' she said, disentangling herself from him and fetching two envelopes from her vanity before returning to his warm embrace, 'look, Robert, this one is my Christmas card for you, and then this one I found in one of my boxes of letters, just before we left, and…well, I wanted to open it then, but I thought we should read it together.'

'Show me,' he said curiously, and she passed him the smaller, ink-stained envelope, slightly crumpled, which he recognised instantly.

'I didn't realise that you still kept the children's letters to Santa,' he said, surveying the envelope, 'do you think we should open this one? I think it's from Edith, perhaps.'

'I think we can,' she replied, her curiosity increasing, for the handwriting on the envelope looked like Edith's, and yet the way the envelope was stained with ink reminded her of Sybil, for some reason. She opened the envelope carefully and pulled out the letter, holding it out so both of them could read it.

_Dear Santa Claus,_

_Granny says the idea of Santa Claus is very American and that she blames Mama for it, but Mama told me I could write to you and tell you what I wanted for Christmas and she promised she wouldn't tell Granny. What I want for Christmas is my Papa to come back from the war, and I told Mama and she started crying and then kissed me and told me that you couldn't make that happen, but I want to ask for it anyway because that would make me really happy. And I want Mama to be all happy and smiley like Mary says that she was before Papa left. Granny said as well that Mama and Papa used to go out dancing a lot, which she thinks was silly but I think it's sweet so then I asked Mama and she said she always liked to dance with Papa and that she met him at a dance so I also wish that they can dance together again._

_From Sybil Crawley. Edith is helping me to write and she says I should write Lady Sybil Crawley but I don't think it makes a difference._

_And I'm sorry I spilt ink on this letter but Nanny made me jump and it spilt. Mary told me that it wouldn't count if it was stained with ink, because Santa didn't answer ink-stained letters from careless people but Mama told me that Mary was only joking and she said something about an English sense of humour._

At the last line, Robert had to clench his fists to avoid tears, but when he realised his wife was crying he used his thumb to gently wipe away her tears whilst taking her other hand and kissing it.

'I'm sorry I caused you all such heartache,' he muttered. The Boer War, over twenty years ago now, was a period in his life which he liked to forget – the agony of war had been shocking and he preferred to forget about what he himself had been through, without realising that his wife and daughters had been impacted more than he could imagine. From what he could tell from just Sybil's letter, though, Cora had been an excellent mother to their children during that time, something he had, of course, assumed but not really appreciated.

'It's not your fault,' she said softly, 'none of it is, Robert.'

He knew by that last remark that she was referring to Sybil's death, telling him that it was not his fault, and he appreciated her more than ever for her patience, her loyalty, her devotion; even though he believed he did not deserve her. She could tell when he didn't want to talk about things, and right now she knew that talking about Sybil's death would be too painful for him, so instead of trying to make him talk, she simply held onto his hand and kissed it, mimicking his actions from before.

'Can I open this?' he asked, picking up the Christmas card –he knew she thought the idea of Christmas cards rather trivial and pointless, so they had never exchanged them, and he wanted to know the reason behind her sudden departure of tradition. Only when he opened the card did he realise that she had written a message inside it, and he pursued it immediately. As he began to read it, she suddenly doubted her words – maybe he would think it was an American notion to display her heart on her sleeve, as she was doing, but some integral part of her wanted him to have something to remember if she ever gave him cause to doubt her love and fidelity again.

_Dear Robert,_

_I had planned to write you a Christmas card that would explain to you how much I love you, but now that I am settled with a pen in my hand and thoughts of you invading my mind, I don't think I can ever explain, to you or to anyone else, just how much I love you. _

_All I know is this – whenever the door opens, I hope it will be you walking through it, whenever you call me darling or dearest my heart jumps, and whenever you hold me in your arms I feel as though there could be no greater feeling in the world. _

_Happy Christmas, Robert, my darling husband. Know that I love you, terribly much, and that I am sorry if I have given you any reason to doubt that recently. _

_With all the love in the world, your Cora._

'Cora,' he whispered, tears gathering in his eyes, 'after everything I've put you through this year?'

'Of course,' she said, rolling her eyes at him as though she thought her answer was obvious, which only served to make the tears spill from his eyes, the combined effect of Sybil's letter and his wife's card making him cry as he hadn't done since Isis's death.

'Cora,' he said, repeating her name because suddenly it felt wonderful on his lips, 'Cora, I have never loved you as much as I do in this moment.'

She only smiled in response and kissed his cheek softly, her lips meeting the tears sliding down his cheeks so that by the time he had brought his other hand up to the back of her neck, his tears had gone.

'I love you so very much,' he said, 'I know I haven't told you enough times – I didn't tell you until almost a year into our marriage and in these last few months I haven't told you at all – but know that whenever I look at you, whenever I see you laughing or dancing or talking, I feel the most peculiar sensation which can only be described as love, because I want you to laugh with me, dance with me, talk to me, and I know that I love you. And it's in those moments that I just feel so suddenly overcome with love for you and I want to sweep you up into my arms and kiss you, I want to shout to the mountaintops how very lucky I am that this woman, this beautiful, stunning, intelligent woman, is my wife.'

'Very charming,' she said, smiling.

'I mean it, Cora,' he said, looking into her eyes so she could see the sincerity reflected in them, 'I'm not saying it out of loyalty, or propriety, or gratefulness, I'm saying it because it's true.'

'I know, darling, I was only teasing,' she said, 'because of course I love you too; I fell in love with you the day I met you.'

'When I spilt my drink all down your dress,' he said chuckling, 'I still can't believe you didn't scream at me for that.'

'Maybe I would have, if you hadn't apologized so charmingly,' she said, smiling at him, 'if it wasn't the tall, handsome Englishman with the blue eyes apologizing to me then my reaction might have been quite different, count yourself lucky.'

'I do count myself lucky,' he said, surprising her, 'I count myself lucky every day that it was you I bumped into, it was your lovely accent telling me that you could put a scarf over it and nobody would notice, it was your laugh telling me that I didn't need to worry about it, and it was your blue eyes that captivated me at that moment.'

In response, she kissed him, a tender, loving kiss which he deepened as he slipped his tongue in her mouth and she parted her lips, sliding back onto the bed and pulling him on top of her. The Christmas card slipped from his fingers as he ran his fingers through her hair, but it was not forgotten, in the morning he would place it in his overcoat pocket, along with his treasured photograph of her.

They made love slowly, sweetly, quietly, both knowing that this was not so much about pleasure as it was about confirming their love for one another – there was an underlying sense that they wanted to prove just how much they loved the other person rather than just how much they desired them. Their previous couplings that day had been brought on by lust – smirks and glances over dinner, a shared smile at a very slightly risqué comment, a tantalising touch before their attention had been claimed by someone else – but this was different, calmer somehow, they both knew what the other needed and after thirty-four years of love they knew where to touch and where to kiss, eliciting soft sighs and moans as their movements became more passionate.

Afterwards, both utterly sated, tired and happy, they curled up together in a nest of tangled bedsheets, whispering goodnight to each other and falling asleep in each other's arms, secure in the love they felt for one another.


End file.
